sniper said:Of course you can achieve that physique naturally. The question is: can you achieve that physique naturally in the gym, and at the same time be competitive in an athletic discipline such as pole vault, where speed and agility are called for (in addition to strength)? As you yourself already issued, you need a lot of recovery time to build such muscle weight, which would normally be at the expense of training hours (read: at the expense of speed and agility).
Okay, this is fun now. Constructive.
I don't see that he has put on a lot of weight, and certainly when you look at swimmers, flexibility and added mass are not mutually exclusive.
This guy is probably younger than me, so recovery may not be so long. I can still crank out 3 sets of "squats and milk" in the gym at 40 and recover well enough in between sessions.
Anyways, we're just hypothesizing now, which is fun, and I think this type of transformation is possible in an offseason. I finished my ultra/mountain running season exactly one month ago. My compression shorts in the last race were uncomfortably loose I had lost so much muscle from my hammies and quads during the season. Not a problem now, four weeks later. Again, its just my experience.